Comment on I learned so much
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 2 months agoI’m talking about Touching Spirit Bear (a book that contains two chapters worth of graphic descriptions of a boy, having been mauled by a bear and barely staying alive, doing things like cramming a live mouse into his gullet to survive). I’m talking about The Jungle (a book my brain has blocked out most of which involves a lot of main character deaths, committing horrific sins just to survive and then not surviving anyway, and a general endless barrage of “so there’s this guy, right, and his life sucks. I mean, it sucks. His wife just died, he watched his coworker get chopped to bits, his boss is raping his sister and if he speaks up about it he’ll be fired and they’ll both starve, everybody has shunned him, oh his life might be looking up never mind he just got outed as a fraud, suffice it to say, his life SUCKS. Also communism is good.”) I’m talking about Fahrenheit 451. I’m talking about Lord of the Flies. I’m talking about books that make kids hate reading.
Why can’t we read Discworld instead?
atomicorange@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Those books are all fucking awesome.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 2 months ago
My brain is having trouble with the idea that anyone could read any of the books I just listed and come away feeling anything othet than revulsion
atomicorange@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Terry Pratchett is great and all, but don’t you have any interest in learning new things? The Jungle is essentially journalism, it exposed real shit that was happening in our own country… and being fed to us. It changed minds. It basically led to the creation of the food and drug administration. It saved lives. That’s a powerful work of art. Revulsion is the intended response. It’s kind of a horror novel.
The other books you listed…. How about wonder? Hope? Fear? Fascination? Dread? Excitement? At least they make you feel something. Boredom is what kills love for reading in my experience. None of the books you listed are boring.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 2 months ago
And Terry Pratchett is boring? Exploring racial tensions through the lens of British humor is not worth reading because it doesn’t make me viscerally scared?
You do you, but if I’m going to read a book for high school, boredom is WAY preferable to revulsion. I’d rather read a physics textbook word for word than be forced to continue reading every time someone dies. Reading books like The Jungle and analyzing them as journalism is important, but I’d like some books that aren’t …that… thrown in for variety. If my parents didn’t thrust their Pratchett stash upon me at an early age I might’ve grown up thinking all Serious Grown-Up Literature was like that.